Michael Ian Black On Playing Gay On ‘The Jim Gaffigan Show,’ Why Improv Doesn’t Work In Sitcoms

Comedian Michael Ian Black has been working in TV and film for almost 25 years. One of his latest projects? Returning the second season of TV Land’s The Jim Gaffigan Show. Black plays Daniel, a real estate agent who is best friends with Jim‘s wife Jeannie. I got a chance to catch up with Black during this past weekend’s ATX Festival and he had a lot to say about popular misconceptions about using improv in filmed comedy and the challenges of playing a gay character with respect.

The Jim Gaffigan Show is produced by Gaffigan and his wife and producing partner Jeannie Gaffigan. The two have a tight professional relationship and cohesive creative vision. So I asked Black, who is known for his many high-profile collaborations, how he contributed to the creative process.

Black replied, “I personally have taken the tact, because they are such a cohesive team, and because they really know who they are, that I really try to keep my mouth shut as much as possible. Because I trust them and I feel like they know what they’re doing, and it’s not on me to tell them how to make their comedy better. There are times when I have questions about things and I’ll ask, but I’ll almost never stick my stupid nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

Black went to say that there’s “a misconception” that most sitcoms lean on improvisation. “Generally I find, as somebody who does a lot of work in comedy, when you work hard on a script, it’s unlikely that somebody’s going to come in and say the perfectly hilarious thing that you hadn’t thought of in the months you’ve been sitting on it.” He explained further: “There are moments where spontaneity happens, and you may say something in that moment that can add, and I try to allow myself to do that but I guess I’ve just come to believe that it doesn’t serve the script usually, and it’s, I find, just inappropriate to just start excreting verbal diarrhea.”

Ashley Williams, who plays the fictional version of Jeannie Gaffigan on the show, chimed in, “Everybody encourages [Michael] and Jim to get a great blow of the scene. Once the work of the scene has been done in terms of serving the plot, there’s a lot of like: Okay, then Jim says a final line, and then Michael retorts, and then Jim retorts, and then Michael retorts, and that kind of keeps going. But the don’t end up getting to use a lot of it because of time!”

Michael Ian Black’s character, Daniel, has a number of very specific personality traits that define him. I asked Black if, like the onscreen versions of Jim and Jeannie, Daniel was based on anyone in particular.

“My understanding is that he is based on kind of an amalgam of people that Jeannie has in her life,” he said. “The way it was described to me initially was, he’s Jeannie’s best friend who kind of happens to be gay and what I understood that to mean is something different than what I ended up playing. Because, I feel like, in my life in New York, the successful population of gay men that I’ve known, there’s something almost political about the way they carry themselves as gay men.”

Black carefully added, “Gay men used to be portrayed in a certain way. We all kind of know what that is, the kind of swishy, lispy, hysterical, whatever. And then there was a strong, and correct, reaction against that where gay men are gay men. What I’ve observed is there is a kind of political statement that gay men make, a certain kind of gay man makes, where they really wear their homosexuality out and proudly. And there’s all kinds of signifiers that they use to let people know, I am a successful, proud, gay man. And I kind of wanted Daniel to do that.”

“But when you do that, there’s a danger I think, in it being interpreted as you’re portraying it as that anachronism of what a gay man is,” he continued. “So for me, a lot of my own sort of work has been about trying to walk that line. And Daniel portrays himself very differently to Jeannie than he does when he’s out in public. He’s much more sort of professional in public and much more sort of relaxed and loose with Jeannie.”

Season Two of The Jim Gaffigan Show debuts this Sunday, June 19th at 10/9 C on TV Land.

Check back with Decider for more on the upcoming season in the next few days.

[Where to Stream The Jim Gaffigan Show]

[Photos: Everett Collection]